Sunday, January 27, 2013

Craig Groeschel with
some wise counsel reprinted from the May/June 2011 issue of Relevant Magazine.

I am going to read your mind. Think: How much money would you
need to feel you were “rich”? Envision a specific dollar amount. Whether your
number is an annual income range or a fixed dollar figure, the number you came
up with is … more than what you currently make or have. How did I know? Because
you’re normal.

Gallup asked Americans what annual income they’d need to
consider themselves rich. People who made $30,000 a year or less answered (on
average) $74,000 a year. People who made around $50,000 a year said they’d need
$100,000 a year to be rich. Virtually no one believed their existing annual
income Perspective classified them as rich. It’s not surprising, really.
Ecclesiastes 5:10 tells us, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever
loves wealth is never satisfied with their income” (NIV).

When normal people picture someone rich, they imagine a hedge
fund tycoon, a successful entrepreneur or that average-looking person in high
school they never dated who grew up, turned gorgeous and wrote a best-selling
novel. It’s always someone else who’s rich, not you. Rich people rarely think
they’re rich—because someone else, somewhere, has more.

Most of us place ourselves financially somewhere between a
millionaire and a homeless person. But there’s a problem with this completely
normal line of thinking. Normal people, even when we sincerely seek to follow
God, often skim past the parts of the Bible directed at rich people, thinking,
“Oh, that’s for somebody else.”

If you haven’t missed a meal in the last three weeks—because you
couldn’t afford it, not because you were dieting—you’re rich. If your kids
attend a school of your choosing—either because you pay for it or because
you’ve chosen to live in a specific geographic area—you’re rich. Do you have a
car? Only 3 to 5 percent of people in the world do, you know. Rich people. If
you have a little house for your car (often called a “garage”), you’re rich. If
you pay other people to prepare and serve you food—like, say, in a
restaurant—you’re rich. While you may not feel rich, the fact is, you are,
because you have rich-people opportunities.

Luke 12:48 says, “From everyone who has been given much, much
will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more
will be asked.” God has blessed you with enough—actually, with more than
enough—because He is entrusting you with a great responsibility. But that
responsibility comes with a wonderful promise: Proverbs 22:9 says, “The
generous will themselves be blessed” (NKJV).

I know business leaders who have an eye for deals. I know good
designers who have an eye for color. But cultivating a generous eye requires no
innate gifts—only practice. What does the world start to look like when we
begin to perceive it through generous eyes? When we focus on giving what we
can, where we can, we begin seeing others the way God sees them: as people in
need.

If we want blessings that last, we need to look beyond
materialism. First John 2:15 and 17 tell us: “Do not love the world or anything
in the world. … The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will
of God lives forever.” What things do you desire? Financial experts say you can
see where your passions are just by looking at your checking account history.
Where you’re spending shows what things you truly care about.

So, we know what we should do. But how do we do it? Jesus
answers in Luke 12:22-34, and in verse 34 specifically: “Where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also.” But this principle can work in reverse,
too. Where do you want your heart to go? Then start putting the things you
value there—and your heart will follow.

As I hinted at earlier, the only way to cultivate generous eyes
is to practice—to look for opportunities and then give in to them. I like to
think of these as three levels of giving:

3. Sacrificial. Live like you’re managing not your own resources, but God’s.
Give both spontaneously and strategically, but use only the minimum that you
need and give the rest.

Practicing all three will not only draw you closer to God,
but it will help you begin to see life from His eternal perspective. When
people say, “I don’t have enough to give,” what they’re truly saying is they
don’t feel they have enough extra to give without adjusting their lifestyle. It
takes deliberate intention and time to develop generous eyes. God has blessed
you so that you can be a blessing to others. It’s time to let God transform
your intentions into actions.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Madelein L’Engle (1918-2007) authored over 40 books, including A
Wrinkle In Time and all of its
sequels. I still recall my 3rd
grade teacher reading those to us, and being mesmerized by the way they
stimulated my imagination. Her writing
reflected her deep Christian faith, a love of science, and a curiosity to ask
many questions. I was privileged to hear her give the Commencement Address to
my graduating class at Wheaton College in 1977.
Here is Part 2 of my favorite quotes from her writings. Let me know which ones resonate with you.

Because it is the nature of love to
create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that,
together we become a new creature.

The growth of love is not a
straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.

Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness
can go on eating at a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its
own time.

The world of science lives fairly
comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is
a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle
physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult
to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe
of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle.
Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

Like it or not, we either add to
the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we
light a candle to see by.

And there's no getting around the
fact that all life lives at the expense of another life.

You and I have good enough minds to
know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an
extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

There is in God, some say, a deep
but dazzling darkness.

It was the same way with silence.
This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was
nothing to feel.

We have much to be judged on when
he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms
of our illness and the result of our failures in love.

Goodness has never been a guarantee
of safety.

One of the most pusillanimous
things we of the female sex have done throughout the centuries is to have
allowed the male sex to assume that mankind is masculine. It is not. It takes
both male and female to make the image of God. The proper understanding of
mankind is that it is only a poor, broken thing if either male or female is
excluded.

The joys of love...last only a
moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.

My dear, I'm seldom sure of anything.
Life at best is a precarious business, and we aren't told that difficult or
painful things won't happen, just that it matters. It matters not just to us
but to the entire universe.

God promised to make you free. He
never promised to make you independent.

Why does anybody tell a story? It
does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has
meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or
say or do matters, matters cosmically.

If you're too happy about anything,
fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.

I am not some kind of computer.
Only machines have glib answers for everything.

The peculiar idea that bigger is
better has been around for at least as long as I have, and it's always bothered
me. There is within it the implication that it is more difficult for God to
care about a gnat than about a galaxy. Creation is just as visible in a grain
of sand as in a skyful of stars. The church is not immune from the bigger-is-better
heresy. One woman told of going to a meeting where only a handful of people
turned out, and these faithful few were scolded by the visiting preacher for
the sparseness of the congregation. And she said indignantly, 'Our Lord said
*feed* my sheep, not count them!' I often feel that I'm being counted, rather
than fed, and so I am hungry.

No! Alike and equal
are not the same thing at all!”

If we don't pray according to the
needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. Our prayers may not be rational,
and we may be quite aware of that, but if we repress our needs, then those
unsaid prayers will fester.

You're going to get hurt yourself,
and badly, if you take everything so hard.

She began to feel the sense of
wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made
her forget her fears.

Love isn't how you feel. It's what
you do.

Two people whose opinion I respect
told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. This
certainly says something about the state of Christianity today. I wouldn't mind
if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is; I
wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might
well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities; I wouldn't mind if,
once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the
word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and
holier-than-thouness. Who today can recognize a Christian because of "how
those Christians love one another"?”

It does not matter that we cannot
fathom this mystery. The only real problem comes when we think that we have.

If we accept that we have at least
an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go wrong. Like
a human parent, God will help us when we ask for help, but in a way that will
make us more mature, more real, not in a way that will diminish us.

You cannot see the past that did
not happen any more than you can foresee the future.

But grief still has to be worked through.
It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping
about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down.
Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters
cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

Compassion is nothing one feels
with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general.

Life is not easy and comfortable,
with nothing ever going wrong as long as you buy the right product. It's not
true that if you have the right insurance everything is going to be fine.
That's not what it's really like. Terrible things happen. And those are the
things we learn from.

We human beings grow through our
failures, not our virtues.

No wonder our youth is confused and
in pain; they long for God, for the transcendent, and they are offered, far too
often, either piosity or sociology, neither of which meets their needs, and
they are introduced to churches which have become buildings that are a safe
place to go to escape the awful demands of God.

Alas. What have we done to our
good, bawdy, Anglo-Saxon four-letter words? ...We have blunted them so with
overuse that they no longer have any real meaning for us. ...When will we be
able to redeem our shock words? They have been turned to marshmallows. ...We no
longer have anything to cry in time of crisis. 'Help!' we bleat. And no one
hears us. 'Help' is another of those four-letter words that don't mean anything
any more.

How do I make more than a fumbling
attempt to explain that faith is not legislated, that it is not a small box
which works twenty-four hours a day? If I 'believe' for two minutes once every
month or so, I'm doing well.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Many of my friends will find this hard to believe, but I just
cancelled my season ticket for the Nashville Predators.This might seem especially odd in that
the 133 day lockout over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between
the National Hockey League and the players’ union has just been resolved, and
the shortened regular season is about to finally commence.

It takes a lot to shake the hockey out of my system. Even
before the NHL’s arrival, I had seen hundreds of major and minor league games
across the country, and wrote a monthly column on pro hockey marketing in a
national publication for years.As
a member of Mayor Phil Bredesen’s civic committee to research and recommend a
downtown arena, I was one of the few that lobbied hard for the facility to be
fitted for ice hockey.Other cam
around to realizing that the NHL was a much better possibility for an expansion
or relocated franchise than the NBA.

As some of you may know, I’ve been a staunch supporter of
the Preds as a season ticket holder since Day 1 in 1998.In the first ten seasons, I only missed
six games. I was on a first name basis friendship with then-owner Craig Leipold
and attended countless fan relation and marketing meetings. I interacted
regularly with many in the front office.Along with a few other knuckleheads, I helped create the fan experience
known as Cellblock 303 that helped generate an energy at Preds’ games like none
other in the league.My vocal
histrionics and enthusiasm at the rink watching the Predators encircle
their quarry…their prey, have earned me the monikers of “The Warden,” “The Duke
of Rebuke,” and, most aptly, “Chief Goofball.” Heck, I was even at Bridgestone
a day and a half after heart surgery yelling my head off for the Predators’
Game 5 clincher over the hated Red Wings in Round One of the Stanley Cup
Playoffs last April. There has been little to compare with the fun and pride of
watching this young team develop into strong contenders. So, it is clear that
my loyalty to the Preds has been unwavering.

When the last lockout occurred, which wiped out the entire
2004-2005 season (a first for any major pro league in US sports history), I
kept my money invested in my tickets.Like most fans, we realized that impasse was necessary for the well being
of the league’s future.Exorbitant
salaries, lack of a salary cap, no profit sharing, etc. needed to be addressed
or the whole system would implode.In the next seven seasons, due to the positive changes that were
implemented, the NHL’s revenue’s tripled to $3 billion, even in the face of the
big recession. You would think that unprecedented growth would mean that when
the current contract came to a close this past September that there would just
need to be a few minor tweaks to the next CBA and the league could continue its
upward trajectory.

But no…greed reared its ugly head on both the owners and
players union sides, and there were no reasonable compromises brought to bear
on how these multi-millionaires were going to split $3,000,000,000. Hence,
another lengthy shutdown.All the
record-breaking growth of the Predators from last season, including a new
record of 25 sellouts, swelling corporate partnerships, and the highest TV
ratings in their history were put in jeopardy.Not to mention all the restaurateurs,
parking enterprises, and arena employees whose livelihoods were threatened with
all the cancelled games.

So, it is not without considerable consternation and sadness
that I’ve made this decision.I
certainly don’t want to see the Predators franchise fail, but SOMEBODY needs to
get the message that these selfish work stoppages are unacceptable, especially
to we fans who fill those millionaires coffers.And maybe it is just ME that needs to be reminded of
this.When I weigh everything out,
I still can’t get past the ungratefulness of the union and the owners.Nor can I stomach their presumption
that we will blindly return no matter what.

I know of other season ticket holders who are willing to
move forward, and I refuse to be critical of anyone else’s reasoning.If they are at peace with their
decision, that is fine by me.My frustration
is not with my fellow fans.

But I feel I need to make this statement.Perhaps I’ll have a change of heart
once the regular season is complete. Or maybe it will be late in the summer
before I’m ready.Or perhaps
never.

My hope is that the league sees a significant drop in
attendance and revenues this season.Maybe a franchise or two closes shop due to significant downturns.Then, perhaps, some vows will be made
by the powers-that-be to NEVER put the fans through this again (I can dream,
can’t I?).

No doubt I will pine-away some evenings for the adrenaline
rush of a spirited contest against the Dead Things, Blackholes, or
Blosers.Going to a Predators’
game is a form of Primal Scream Therapy where I can pour it out in a way that
is good for my constitution.But more
than anything, I will miss the camaraderie of all my fellow inmates in the
Cellblock, and the rest of the NBP (North Balcony Posse).I hope to see you all again…and please
don’t hold this against me.

When I receive my refund from the Preds for my season
ticket, I’m signing it over to the Nashville Rescue Mission.Now there’s a downtown institution
that’s been staying open day in and day out for decades and actually doing what
they’re supposed to be doing.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Madelein L’Engle (1918-2007) authored over 40 books, including A
Wrinkle In Time and all of its
sequels. I still recall my 3rd
grade teacher reading those to us, and being mesmerized by the way they
stimulated my imagination. Her writing
reflected her deep Christian faith, a love of science, and a curiosity to ask
many questions. I was privileged to hear her give the Commencement Address to
my graduating class at Wheaton College in 1977.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from her writings. Let me know which ones resonate with you.

When we were children, we used to
think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow
up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

A self is not something static,
tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A
self is always becoming.

Time exists so that everything
doesn't happen at once.

The unending paradox is that we do
learn through pain.

If we commit ourselves to one
person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom;
rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the
risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but
participation.

A book, too, can be a star, a
living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

If it can be verified, we don't
need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith
is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden,
startling joys.

Maybe you have to know the darkness
before you can appreciate the light.

Our truest response to the
irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such
response do we find truth.

Some things have to be believed to
be seen.

Life, with its rules, its
obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you
have to write the sonnet yourself.

When we lose our myths we lose our
place in the universe.

I will have nothing to do with a
God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always,
everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when
things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have
been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when
things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along
blindly.

The only way to cope with something
deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly

Just because we don't understand
doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

The great thing about getting older
is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

Stories make us more alive, more
human, more courageous, more loving.

Love of music, of sunsets and sea;
a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically
divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous
strangeness of the universe - these are what build a marriage. And it is never
to be taken for granted.

Believing takes practice.

We are all strangers in a strange
land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse
it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a
strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.

I love, therefore I am vulnerable.

It's a good thing to have all the
props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is
rock under our feet, and what is sand.

The minute we begin to think we
have all the answers, we forget the questions.

Instead of rejoicing in this
glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives,
we try to domesticate God, to make his mighty actions comprehensible to our
finite minds.

Inspiration usually comes during
work rather than before it.

Death is contagious; it is
contracted the moment we are conceived.

I think that all artists,
regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of
certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of
reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no
matter what.

We have to be braver than we think
we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

But unless we are creators we are
not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of
creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words.
Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our
living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important
career.

Humility is throwing oneself away
in complete concentration on something or someone else.

It's hard to let go anything we
love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're
left with a fistful of ashes.

We think because we have words, not
the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think
conceptually.

Truth is what is true, and it's not
necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not
contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is
something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be
dangerous.

That's the way things come clear.
All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.

Creative scientists and saints
expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up
and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.

We do learn and develop when we are
exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we
mature.

Basically there can be no
categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is
incarnational, and therefore 'religious.

But there is something about Time.
The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds
fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born,
and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute
hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the
scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever
revolving, and of months, and of years.

God understands that part of us
which is more than what we think we are.

Those who believe they believe in
God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without
uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in
the idea of God, and not in God himself.

An infinite question is often
destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that
gives us laughter and joy.

We turn to stories and pictures and
music because they show us who and what and why we are.

Darkness was and darkness was good.
As with light. Light and Darkness dancing together, born together, born of each
other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful
rhythm.

I do not think that I will ever
reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished."
What I believe is alive ... and open to growth.

Love is the one surprise.

She seems to have had the ability
to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and
unregretfully in the present.

It is possible to suffer and
despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.

When I have something to say that I
think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children.
Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and
windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too
difficult for children.

Truth is eternal. Knowledge is
changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them.

About Me

Described as a renaissance man, Mark A. Hollingsworth considers himself a citizen of the world. He has traveled to forty-nine countries as a manager of rock bands and an advocate for the poor in the developing world. He has been published in two dozen magazines ranging from Billboard to National Lampoon, and his blog has had over 50,000 readers in the past four years. Mark resides in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mark's Favorite Blogs:
http://notjusttalk.tumblr.com/